


Being Friends

by boywonder



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1446607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boywonder/pseuds/boywonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“What exactly are we doing here?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Spock sat on the couch, not too close to Jim, but not as far away as he might have. “Being friends,” he replied.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



Once he felt up to it, and despite people trying to tell him not to, Jim spent a lot of time going to watch the workers repairing the _Enterprise_. It was the third time he'd seen people working on her like this, and each time, there was less joy in it.

The first time, he'd been answering a challenge. Sure, he'd ridden his bike past the construction site. It was hard to miss that they were building a giant starship in the middle of a field in nowhere, Iowa. And it was hyped, anyway; he'd heard about it. For a long time, though, he hadn't _cared_. And then Christopher Pike had walked in and stopped a bar fight, and changed his mind – and his life. After he'd decided to answer Pike's challenge and join Starfleet, he'd had every reason to look at the skeleton of the ship. It had been pretty awesome, actually. And he'd had absolutely no idea what he was really getting into.

The second time he'd watched people working on the ship had been after the ship had been nearly destroyed by Nero and the red matter. They'd had to rebuild entire sections of her that time, and as Jim stood on the ground watching he'd had a sense of pride about it. But he'd also had a sense of fragility, of regret. _Billions_ of Vulcans had died, and no one could repair that. And there were other ships from the fleet in shattered ruins in space, never to be put back together. They'd been lucky. He'd been _right_ , yeah, but they'd still been lucky. In the end, his pride won, because he was _James T. Kirk_. And his crew trusted him, maybe even loved him. Well, some of them maybe loved him. Some of them were Nyota Uhura, and took a lot more convincing. And some of them...were Spock, whatever that meant.

Now, he looked up at the broken _Enterprise_ and couldn't put a name to what he felt. So he just looked at the ship, and the workers moving on and around her, and said nothing. If anyone noticed him, no one said anything to him. For once, he was fine with being unnoticed.

“They will repair the ship, Captain,” came a familiar voice from just behind Jim's left shoulder. “That is their job, after all.”

Jim shifted his head a little in Spock's direction, but didn't actually look at him.

“Yeah, they'll fix _her_ ,” he said.

Spock tilted his head slightly, too, though it was more a gesture of curiosity than anything else, and anyway, Jim wasn't looking at him to see him do it.

“You emphasized the word 'her,' Captain,” he said. “Judging by your tone, I would assume that you mean there are other things that are not so easily fixed.”

“Assuming is a bad habit, Spock.”

“With you, this is especially true,” Spock agreed, “as you seem to do everything you possibly can to be unpredictable. And yet, I _assumed_ when I did not find you in your room this morning, that you would be here.”

“So you know me better than a lot of people do,” Jim said. “Still shouldn't assume things.”

“I apologize, Captain, perhaps 'assume' is an inaccurate word choice. I will try to-”

Jim held up a hand. “Don't patronize me, Spock, I'm not in the mood.”

“Captain-”

“ _Don't_.”

Spock was quiet for a few seconds. The next time he spoke, his tone was softer and less clinical-sounding. “Jim.”

Jim sighed and tore his eyes away from the broken _Enterprise_ , and finally turned to look at Spock. “What?”

“Will you walk with me?”

Jim thought about refusing, about telling Spock to get lost. But with his tone softened like that...it didn't sound like an order or like it was for Jim's own perceived good. It wasn't quite _emotional_ , but coming from Spock it was as close as he was likely to get.

“Okay,” was all he said.

Spock nodded his head slightly, then turned crisply on his heel and started to walk away. Jim rolled his eyes at the Vulcan's rigidity, but he fell into step with him.

“Your comment about the ship. The implication was that _you_ are the thing that cannot be fixed. Am I incorrect?” Spock asked, once they were far away from the ship and the workers. There was no one else on the path within earshot, and he kept his voice low and more or less conversational in tone.

“This is why you wanted me to take a walk with you?” Jim asked, annoyed.

“No. However, it is something I would like to discuss.”

“I don't really want to discuss it. You guys _did_ fix me, remember?”

“Dr. McCoy 'fixed' you, if you are referring to the fact that you are currently able to walk and talk at all,” Spock replied, his tone tense. He tried to sound removed – Jim could hear it there in his voice – but he didn't quite get there. Sometimes Jim forgot that underneath all that Vulcan lack of emotion was human feeling, too. Spock wasn't _just_ a Vulcan, after all.

“ _Your_ tone implies that there's another meaning to the word 'fixed' in this instance,” Jim said, unable to resist mocking his first officer.

Spock's lips pursed into a tight line, but only for a moment. “Your own tone earlier implied the same. It is a very different thing to heal a body than it is to heal a mind or an emotional center.”

“A heart, you mean?”

“The heart is a part of the body.”  
 “You know exactly what I meant.”  “ _You_ know what I meant by emotional center. What good is it to argue the terms used to express the same thing when both parties understand the meaning?”

“I don't need emotional healing, Spock,” Jim replied, giving up the argument for the time being, more because he was annoyed with Spock thinking he was damaged than because he thought he was losing.

“Are you certain of that, Captain?” Spock asked, one eyebrow raising just a little.

“If you're trying to say I'm somehow compromised–“

“No, Captain. _Jim._ I think you're as capable of making judgments right now as you have ever been.” He stopped walking and turned to face Jim, but continued talking. “My concern for you is not related to your ability or inability to captain the _Enterprise_ , or indeed because I am your First Officer. My concern for you is that of a friend.”

Jim sighed, but he finally got it. “Okay. You wanna talk about Vulcan?”

Spock stiffened only slightly. Jim probably wouldn't have even caught it, back when they'd met, but he caught it now. “No, I do not.”

“Uh-huh. And I don't want to talk about this. Okay?”

Spock stared at him for a moment, his eyes unreadable. That gaze was unnerving, but Jim held it all the same. Finally, Spock started walking again. “Understood.”

Jim was still for another second before following again. He followed Spock back to his private quarters, though he was a little hesitant to actually enter.  
 “This is kinda personal, isn't it?”

“It is just a living area, Captain, is it not?” Spock asked in response.

“I guess. It just seems like...something you wouldn't want to share with me.”

“You and Dr. McCoy spend time in each others' quarters, do you not? If this is a misstep in human interaction-”

“Spock. Don't act like I'm the only human you have interaction with. Come on.”

“You are the human male that I have the most direct interaction with in a social context. It is possible that I do not understand the proper etiquette as well as I thought.”

“This, after two years? I thought we'd gotten over this.”

“In some senses, there is much we still have to 'get over,'” Spock replied.

“Touché,” Jim said, and decided to park himself on the sofa. The room itself wasn't really any different from any other living quarters. Because Spock was an officer, it was bigger than some other ones that Jim had been in, and it sure wasn't like the dorms at the Academy. But Jim was officially a Captain again, himself. Even though Admiral Marcus had been a traitor, the restoration of Jim's captaincy hadn't been rescinded. Jim was kind of waiting for someone to come along and tell him otherwise, but they hadn't. So he was used to bigger living quarters himself.

What _was_ quite different was that Spock's quarters were pristine. Jim's weren't a huge mess, since he didn't own all that much to mess them up with, but he wasn't anywhere near as perfectly fastidious as his first officer was. That wasn't really surprising.

Spock wandered away; Jim wasn't watching where he went, really, so he hardly noticed the absence. He returned quickly enough, and set something down on the table in front of the sofa.

“Is that _beer_?” Jim asked, too surprised to even find a way to make fun.

“This is something you enjoy, correct?”

“Yeah, but I didn't know Vulcans were into booze.”

“We aren't,” Spock said. He picked one of the bottles up out of the holder, twisted the top off, and offered it to Jim.

Jim gave him a skeptical look, but took it. “What exactly are we doing here?”

Spock sat on the couch, not too close to Jim, but not as far away as he might have. “Being friends,” he replied.

Jim shook his head and took a drink. The beer was fine, and he didn't have any actual objections to the situation. It just seemed...tense and formal, neither of which was his style.  
“So we're gonna sit here and I'm gonna drink and you're going to...watch me?”

“Do you play chess, Captain?” Spock asked, ignoring Jim's question.

“Yeah, why?”

“Would you care to play a game with me?”

“Which kind of chess are we talking?”

“The old style of chess would not be challenging enough for either of us. I was referring to 3-Dimensional chess.”

“Okay, you're on,” said Jim, a grin sliding onto his face.

They were both surprised by how equally matched they were when it came to the game's skill. The more bottles of beer Jim cracked open, however, the more his skill deteriorated. Eventually, it wasn't even worth playing anymore, but he stubbornly refused to give up.

“No way, I still know 'xactly what 'm doing,” Jim said when Spock shut the game down.

“Considering your inability to properly enunciate when you speak, I think your assessment of your awareness is as diminished as your ability to play,” Spock said. Jim couldn't be sure later, since he was pretty well on his way to drunk, but he could have sworn that Spock looked amused.

“I'm perf'ly capable of whatever I wanna do,” Jim said. As if to prove a point, he stood up. Standing up certainly proved _a_ point, but not _Jim's_ point. He took a step and a half toward Spock before he stumbled. He caught himself, but just barely.

Spock reached out a hand to steady the captain, and helped him back to the couch.

“Coulda done that alone,” Jim said, but he wasn't actually upset. He sat on the couch heavily, as if he couldn't be bothered to keep standing. Spock sat next to him with far more grace.

“I should have stopped you after two bottles, I think,” Spock mused. “I will have to take your tolerance into consideration next time. I had expected you had a higher tolerance after the stories I've heard.”

“I haven't had a drink in awhile,” Jim said. “And 'm not _that_ drunk.”

“If you say so, Captain,” Spock said, in a dismissive tone. Arguing with Jim when he'd been drinking didn't seem like a worthwhile endeavor.

“Jim,” Jim said.  
 “What?” Spock looked at him, puzzled; surely the captain wasn't drunk enough to start saying his own name aloud?

“It's _Jim_. You call me 'Captain' when you're scolding me but we're not on the ship or anywhere anyone's gonna bust you for using my name. Don't throw that title at me to distance yourself from me.”

“Your ability to speak seems to have returned in full force,” Spock said.

“Told you. Not that drunk. Trust me, I've been _way_ drunker'n this lots of times.”   
“I have no doubt, Captain.”

“ _Jim_ ,” Jim insisted, furrowing his eyebrows at the Vulcan.

Spock held his gaze for a long time, but didn't speak. Jim finally sighed and looked away. After a moment of silence between them, he slid closer to Spock on the couch. He bumped up against the Vulcan a little hard, having overestimated the amount of effort needed, but Spock didn't seem to mind.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

Jim nodded. “More or less,” he said. He searched Spock's face for a moment, though what he was looking for, he couldn't have said. He found himself with his mouth pressed against the Spock's before he could rationalize it or think better of it. Spock went stiff under him for a moment. He didn't pull away, or push Jim away, but he didn't return the kiss, either.

Jim leaned back again. “I know you know how to kiss.”

“Yes.”

“So you gonna kiss me or what?”

“I am not certain.”

“ _You_ , not certain? Why the hell not?”

“You're drunk.”

“So?”

“So it would be...unwise.”

“Come on, it's not like you're taking advantage of me or anything. Kissing isn't like fucking, it's just kissing.”

“Is this what friendship is to you, Jim?” Spock asked.

Jim couldn't tell if he was making fun or not. Either way, he didn't appreciate it. He shook his head and pushed himself back to the opposite end of the couch. “Maybe,” he said, petulantly.

“I don't want to be something you regret in the morning,” Spock said.

Jim laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Maybe you know more about human interaction than you let on, huh,” he said. “But I don't do regrets, certainly not in the morning.”

“If I am going to kiss you, I am going to do it when you are in absolute control of your faculties.”

“Uh-huh,” Jim said. He crossed his arms and stared off at the wall, considering whether or not to storm out.

Before he could make a decision, Spock reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at the Vulcan, about to say something scathing, but the look on Spock's face made him stop.

“Jim. Do not take it personally.”

“If I kiss you when I'm sober, then what?”

“There is a distinct possibility that such an effort would be successful,” Spock said, and Jim swore there was something like a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth.

“Are you _teasing_ me, Spock?” Jim asked.

“You tell me, Captain,” Spock responded. Jim tried to find something insulting to say, but he came up with nothing. Spock moved his hand away again. Jim found that his anger had disappeared, and the silence that settled on them then was more amiable.

After a few minutes, Jim moved back over and leaned his head on Spock's shoulder. “Hey Spock?”

“Yes?”

“I'm glad I'm not dead,” he said.

“That feeling is mutual, Captain.”

“We seriously need to work on this name thing,” Jim said.

“Luckily, we have time for that,” Spock said, softly. Jim was drunk, but he still wasn't an idiot. There was feeling that Spock left unexpressed, but he could tell. This friendship thing meant a lot more than he'd say out loud. Maybe that was true for both of them.

Jim didn't remember falling asleep, and he didn't remember Spock covering him with a blanket. When he woke up, it was dark outside, and Spock was standing near the window, hands clasped behind his back, looking out at who even knew what.

“Spock?” he asked.

Spock turned and looked at him. “Go back to sleep, Jim. I will still be here in the morning.”

Jim closed his eyes again, and he thought that he could get used to words like that coming out of Spock's mouth.


End file.
